A hip-hop audio documentary by the Detroit Summer Live Arts Media Project

Through the Live Arts Media Project, Detroit Summer is using art and media to voice creative, sustainable solutions to the problems we face in our schools, neighborhoods and the world.

We believe that young people should have a voice in the decisions that determine their lives. Our CD, "Rising Up From the Ashes: Chronicles of a Drop-Out", is a youth response to the drop-out crisis in Detroit schools. If every student who dropped out went back to school, DPS would have enough money to keep all the schools open. What would it take to stop people from dropping out? What would it take to bring them back?

We believe it would take a new vision for the purpose of education, new relationships between students and teachers, between students and students, and between students and the material they are learning. We would need curriculum that was fair and relevant and that prepared youth to solve the urgent problems in their lives and their communities.

To keep our schools open, we need money. But we need creativity, hope and youth participation if we want our schools to fulfill the human right to education.

First published in 1962, Negroes with Guns is the story of a southern black community's struggle to arm itself in self-defense against the Ku Klux Klan and other racist groups. Frustrated and angered by violence condoned or abetted by the local authorities against blacks, the small community of Monroe, North Carolina, brought the issue of armed self-defense to the forefront of the civil rights movement. The single most important intellectual influence on Huey P. Newton, the founder of the Black Panther Party, Negroes with Guns is a classic story of a man who risked his life for democracy and freedom.

By Robert F. Williams

Wayne State University Press

Do poets' surroundings shape their viewpoint and work? Abandon Automobile seeks to address this question by bringing together the work of more than one hundred of Detroit's most acclaimed and accessible poets. Writing about location as if it were a living entity, these poets visualize Detroit as a variety of complex archetypes—the city becomes a savior, a beast, a nurturing mother, a seductress, a friend, an enemy. Like the city itself, the poetry represented is diverse and the poems are by turns tender, forceful, introspective, and vital. In the introduction to the volume, Melba Joyce Boyd and M. L. Liebler show how Detroit's poetry scene has changed over the years to embrace political movements and cultural transformations. Readers will find that one doesn't need to be a Detroit native to enjoy the many themes of this anthology. The exciting range of voices represented in this collection will appeal to anyone interested in poetry, regional literature, and urban life.